International

Germany: Investigations Stepped up After Lorry Attack

A man on December 19, 2016 drove a lorry into a crowded Berlin market, killing 12 people.

German police yesterday, December 20, 2016, continued investigating a terrorist attack after a man drove a lorry into a Christmas market in the heart of Berlin the day before, killing 12 people and injuring at least 48 others, the BBC said. The Telegraph newspaper cited German media as reporting that the suspect was Naved B, a 23-year-old asylum seeker of Pakistani origin. But German authorities said they were not sure if the man in custody was behind Monday's lorry attack on the Berlin Christmas market.

The man, who denied involvement, arrived in Germany from Pakistan at the end of last year. He was captured in a park after reportedly fleeing the scene. Meanwhile, German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has vowed to punish those responsible for the attack “as harshly as the law requires.” A passenger in the lorry - believed to be the original driver - was later found dead inside. German authorities confirmed that the passenger was a Polish national and that he was not the person in control of the delivery vehicle at the time of the crash.

The Polish company that owns the truck said it was loaded with steel beams and left for Berlin earlier in the day, but contact with the driver was lost at around 4 pm local time. The company said it believed the lorry might have been hijacked. There has been concern in Germany that the country’s traditional Christmas markets could be targets of terrorist attacks. Days before the Berlin incident, German intelligence picked up several indications of an imminent attack on a market, the Die Welt newspaper reported.